Thursday, July 7, 2016

Breitbart introduces us to the oddest people

Joseph R. Murray II, we are told, is the administrator for LGBTrump, a former campaign official for Pat Buchanan, and the author of “Odd Man Out.” Mr. Murray is irrelevant but he loves attention and I am probably feeding his personality disorder. Nevertheless, he gives cover via Breitbart to those who are intent on discrimination.

At his personal website we are told that Murray is an attorney (a graduate of Hofstra Law on Long Island) and;

He has worked for conservative tycoons such as Pat Buchanan, Don Wildmon (American Family Association), and Alan Sears (Alliance Defending Freedom), but Joe is gay.

He actually admits to working for an anti-gay hate group. Murray practiced law out of Ripley, Mississippi. The last time he was in federal court appears to be in a sex discrimination case filed in August, 2013. The case (Fairley v. Azalea Gardens Nursing Center) was settled about a year later.

I will get back to Mr. Murray but first, I am a recovering Republican. I kinda get Log Cabin and, to be fair, they were one of the prime movers in the repeal of DADT. I never did figure out what GOProud was supposed to do. I haven't been able to support a Republican candidate since Bill Green was my congressman (succeeding Ed Koch) — and Bill has been dead for nearly 15 years. I have this silly idea that I should be afforded equal protection under law. I demand nothing more and will settle for nothing less. If someone would deny me that presumptive constitutional right then I have no use for them.

Mr. Murray craves attention which might explain why he would do work for Pat Buchanan (Pat Buchanan!?). He is a gay guy claiming that “he worked with Patrick J. Buchanan during his 1999 bid for the GOP nomination.” I am sure that was worthy of some attention. LGBTrump is little more than a single frame, poorly designed website and a Facebook presence.

Motives and personality disorder aside, Murray remarkably writes “Donald Trump’s Support for N.C. Bathroom Law Is Pro-Everybody.” Really? He explains:

The terror attack in Orlando is encouraging gay Americans to give Donald Trump a second look, so the LGBT establishment is trying to divert its eyes to the political theater in North Carolina where Trump is being portrayed as Rick Santorum blocking transgender people at the bathroom door.

No we are not (giving Trump a second look). His support among LGBT citizens is presumably comparable to his support among Hispanic or Muslim Americans. Trump has promised to nominate judges to the Supreme Court with the explicit intent of overturning Obergefell v. Hodges. Trump's current excuse is that it should be left up to the states which would make him an enabler of bigotry in places like Mississippi, Alabama and Texas. Furthermore, Trump informed us that he was opposed to marriage equality in principle seven years ago during the Carrie Prejean spectacle. Whatever he promised those evangelical Christian pastors he met with recently, you can be sure that none of it was good for LGBT citizens.

Nothing that happened in Orlando gives gay people any cause to consider Trump. His anti-Muslim campaign rhetoric is responsible for an increase in anti-American sentiment abroad. Trump opposes gun safety measures than might prevent an unbalanced person from acquiring the weapons to facilitate the next Orlando (and there will be a next). Trump has already told us that he doesn't listen to advisors and his foreign policy experience is limited to staging beauty pageants.

The excuse for this preposterous theater is that Trump says the state’s voters have the right to balance their own disputes over bathroom privacy, the two sexes and accommodations for transgender people’s sometimes-indeterminate sexuality.

Mr. Murray clearly has no clue about sexual identity. But it gets worse later on:

The HB2 law, also known as the privacy and security act, says everyone’s sexual privacy should be protected by requiring men and women to use the public bathrooms designated for their sex. The law also accommodates transgender people because state law allows people to change their legal sex once they take medical procedures that clearly show which side of the sex and gender fence they’d rather stand. That state solution — although imperfect — is a better and fairer fix than a one-size-fits-all policy set by lobbyists and party hacks in Washington D.C.

No mention of the fact that, prior to the enactment of HB2, the counties of Buncombe, Mecklenburg, and Orange as well as the cities of Asheville and Charlotte, Boone, Carrboro, Chapel Hill, Greensboro, and Raleigh prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation and gender identity. The counties of Durham and Guilford along with the cities of Bessemer, Durham, High Point and Winston-Salem prohibited discrimination on the basis of sexual orientation. HB2 nullified all of those protections. Where is the respect for the people of those municipalities?

As a gay man in the Bible Belt this evisceration of municipal nondiscrimination ordinances should concern him but I think that he is more interested in the attention, particularly if he manages to get some from Trump. Thoroughly understanding the issue is relatively unimportant. Furthermore, “one-size-fits-all policy set by lobbyists and party hacks in Washington D.C.” is nothing more than a hyperbolic, unoriginal, cliched bromide. It doesn't mean anything. And it gets worse:

Though LGBT activists are loathe to admit it, the plight of
transgender Americans are starkly different from lesbian and gay
Americans.

Eve can persuade Americans to let her become Steve in law and society — but Eve can’t flip back to Steve whenever it suits her, or him, or her or him. She doesn’t get to decide whether to use the men or women’s shower rooms today, or run in the women’s athletic race next month, or wear a skirt to the board meeting on Tuesday and a suit at the sales meeting on Wednesday, or be treated as a man but also a pregnant woman.

Where did this guy get the idea that sexual identity is a whim or something that is gratuitous? Oh, I know. This is right out of the same conservative Christian bullshit that claims Murray is a pervert who poses a threat to children.

The reaction of LGBT left, however, shows that it is more concerned about North Carolina law and is ignoring the threat of sharia law. That should qualify them from being the “voice” of LGBT politics.

Sentence structure aside and I think he means “disqualify,” critical thinkers understand that Trump poses a significant threat to national security. The key qualities that I look for are the same that I used to look for in managers:

The ability to really listen and;

The introspection and humility to discover what they don't know; Intellectual curiosity.

Trump fails on both counts. He listens only to himself and he doesn't know what he doesn't know. He doesn't seem terribly interested in learning anything and has demonstrated that his curiosity is on par with Sarah Palin.

As for Mr. Murray, well, he manages to be self-loathing and self-aggrandizing at the same time. I suppose that is an accomplishment of sorts.